As they have each year since the brutal 1999 mur­der of Billy Jack Gaither, gay rights groups from across Alabama will gather in Montgomery on Sunday to push for an end to violence against gays and lesbians.

Gaither, a 39-year-old Sy­lacauga man, was stabbed, his throat was cut, he was beaten with an ax handle and his body burned on a pile of tires on Feb. 19, 1999, because he was gay. Two men were sentenced to life in prison for the murder.

Sunday's vigil, being held at 4 p.m. on the steps of the state capitol, is intended to urge lawmakers to pass a proposed expansion of Ala­bama's hate crime law, or­ganizers said.

Alabama's current hate crimes law sets mandatory minimum sentences for crimes motivated by race, color, religion, national ori­gin, ethnicity or physical or mental disability, but does not address sexual orienta­tion or gender identity. Gay rights advocates say that must change.

According to FBI statistics, 19 percent of hate crime victims nationwide in 2010 were targeted because of sexual orientation, making gays and lesbians the third most targeted group for hate crimes.

"Violence in Alabama is real. Just look what happened to Billy Jack Gaither. We've got to stop blaming victims and see gay bashing for what it is -- a willful act of violence. There's a glaring hole in Alabama's hate crime law and we've got to close it," Ralph Young, Equality Alabama's vicechairman, said in a news statement.

State Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, the state's first openly lesbian legislator, has introduced a bill to expand the state's hate crime law, but as of Friday no action had been taken on the bill, according to legislative records. The fight for that expansion of the hate crimes law has been going on for 15 years but has had no success, said George Olsson, an advocate for gays and lesbians who helped organize the first vigil a month after Gaither's murder.

"It's not getting anywhere, but we keep trying," Olsson said.

Olsson recalled that in the 1990s one legislator said "he couldn't vote for it because he was afraid his constituents would think he was gay."

Also at the event, James Robinson will receive the Billy Jack Gaither Humanitarian Award in recognition of the work he has done on behalf of young gays and lesbians in Huntsville.

Hoover High School student Sara Couvillon will receive the Stephen Light Youth Activism Award. That award is named in honor of a gay rights activist who died in June at age 25, Young said.

Couvillon was told by Hoover school officials in August that she could not attend school wearing a T-shirt that read "gay? fine by me." The school quickly reversed that decision after facing legal pressure by the SPLC.

The event is co-sponsored by the Alabama NOW, Equality Alabama, Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Montgomery, New Hope Metropolitan Community Church, the Montgomerybased Parents, Friends, and Families of Lesbians and Gays, the Alabama Safe Schools Coalition, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Montgomery, and the SPLC.